Kentucky Burger with Bourbon Onions and Pimento Beer Cheese

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Kentucky Burger with Bourbon Onions and Pimento Beer Cheese is an homage to my family and childhood memories.  From the pimento cheese combined with beer cheese to the bourbon onions and pickled okra topping everything on this burger reminds me of home.

This epic burger is part of a fan-frickin-tastic month long event, but opinions are always my own!

This burger is an homage to all things I love about Kentucky. Because, y’all know I’m from there right? I might live near the big city of Washington, DC, but I’m a Kentucky girl through and through. I know how to cook a country ham, make hot browns, and bake a Derby pie. I’ve even eaten where the Colonel has eaten and had his wife’s fried chicken. Best chicken ever!

I bleed UK blue, even though I didn’t go to the University of Kentucky. When I hear the call to post I get chills. Even singing My Old Kentucky Home brings a tear to my eye. However, I do miss those rolling blue grass hills.

I wanted to put everything that’s Kentucky, at least my memories of it, into one epic burger to kick off #BurgerMonth. To me, that means bourbon, pimento cheese, and beer cheese on top of this epic burger. Oh yeah, and some pickled okra, too.

Doesn’t that just sound divine??

I should probably talk to you about burger month. It’s hosted by girl carnivore and is all about the burgers!! We have XX bloggers and other burger enthusiasts joining in this month. It grows every year. And the burgers get more and more outrageous every year.

Anyone is welcome to join in. You simply need to have access to some social media accounts to be able to share your burger and share the giveaway. Oh! Didn’t I mention the giveaway? Yes, there’s a giveaway for some great burger related and grilling goods. 

And while you’re at it, head over to the monthly burger challenge. Well, it’s sort of monthly. We skip December and, well, May. For obvious reasons. I actually was giving Girl Carnivore a hard time for skipping May. I think we should do an optional December burger, too. But that’s just me.

This burger as meant to be shared for last month’s #BurgerMonth. I just did not get around to making it in time to share. I think another group event impeded that progress. One that involves more than just burgers. But you’ll figure that out in a few weeks time.

Just like this burger pays homage to my roots, the burgers I will be sharing this month pay homage to the monthly burger group. This year I am sharing burgers for all the months I missed during the burger challenge. For scheduling, timing, or ingredient reasons I just didn’t get around to making them and sharing them with the group.

Some of them are pretty interesting. We had some really great ingredients on the challenge list. And since this is the first year we started doing this, I can’t wait to see what ingredients we have to cook with in the coming months. I mean, marshmallows and fig and red hots? Those are just a few that challenged us this year.

Thankfully, #BurgerMonth is a free for all challenge. Really the only challenge is to just create an epic burger! And it doesn’t even have to be a beef burger. You can make veggie burgers, chicken burgers; you name it!! I had a cod cake burger in the works this year. It was the March challenge, I think. Don’t quote me on that one.

 

So, I think I should talk about this Kentucky burger right here, though, don’t you?

The inspiration comes from many things from my childhood. Well, not exactly the bourbon. We weren’t allowed to drink bourbon when we were little. But when there was a Derby party, of course, we could try a mint julep or two.

Pimento cheese is not necessarily a Kentucky dish so much as it is a Southern dish. And while it wasn’t invented in the South, we sure did make it popular and come in many regional favorites. The rumor has it that farmer’s cheese, which is a predecessor of cream cheese, was mixed with Spanish pimientos in New York. It was so tasty and delicious that Good Housekeeping published a recipe in 1908. The dish spread like wildfire after that.

I knew nothing of this growing up. I just knew that if we went fishing, there would always be pimento cheese sandwiches. Those creamy cheese spread sandwiches made fishing worthwhile with Nana. And her pimento cheese is, hands down, the BEST you have ever tasted.

Next up, beer cheese!

Now this one I know is predominately from Kentucky if not invented there. It’s a simple mixture of sharp Cheddar cheese and beer with some garlic and onion added in for flavor. Finally, there’s a bit of cayenne added for a bit of a kick. This makes THE BEST spread for any and all soft pretzels. And no, it’s not dip consistency. At least my recipe isn’t. Mine is a spread consistency.

 

And now the light bulb has gone off, right?

Now you made the connection of my putting the pimento cheese and beer cheese together into one recipe and spread for this killer Kentucky burger. They’re both made with cheese and my recipes has then both made into spread consistencies. Perfect to top a Kentucky burger with!

And, well, I think the bourbon part is pretty self explanatory. But bourbon onions might not be. Grated most put onions on their burgers, but these onions are not those onions. These are bourbon Vidalia onions.

You see, for many years in a row, our family would hike down 95 south to spend a week or two in Florida. And no, not Orlando. Our family vacations almost always centered around the beach of some sort. Most of the time it was St. Augustine, but not always.

But, we would always plan a stop through Georgia to pick up some Vidalia onions. Which, at that time, you could only get in Georgia. Now they’re shipped north every year. And every year I look at them and think fondly of all those trips south and stopping at some farmer’s market on the way down to pick them up.

Why not on the way back? Well, almost all of our family vacations centered around having at the last a kitchenette to book food. We planned maybe 2 dinners our, but the rest of the time we cooked dinner. Yes, even on vacation. That’s what you do when you’re vacation on the cheap or budget friendly, I should say. And quite frankly, I prefer it. Eating out all that time just tears my tongue up. I feel like it’s been on a salt lick all week when we eat out so much.

Yes. I realize that is more than you wanted to know. But it’s the driving force behind cooking at home 6 nights a week-ish. Yes, lately I am not motivated. But with my new job and my husband’s work schedule, I will need to be more organized. Just to I can make sure there’s something healthy-ish to eat when I get home and when he gets home. Whether he eats it or not is up to him. He’s a big boy. If he doesn’t want to eat when he gets home, that’s his choice.

So, there you have it. My Kentucky Burger with Bourbon Onions and Pimento Beer Cheese. I will have to confess that the pimento beer cheese is out of his world. I have no idea why I never considered combining the two before now. But, you can bet that i will be keeping this spread on hand any at all times. It’s great for sandwiches, dips for pretzels and veggies, and perfect to melt with macaroni for a killer mac n cheese.

Today is the first day of #BurgerMonth. I hope you follow with us this week as we all create epic burgerness that is lick your phone drool worthy!